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INDIANAPOLIS — You have to start here: third-and-5, the ball resting on the Dallas 25-yard-line, late in the evening of Dec. 11 inside Cowboys Stadium. There are two minutes and 25 seconds left in the game, and the Cowboys lead the Giants 34-29, and the Giants have just taken their second timeout.
Tony Romo drops back to pass, and what he sees in front of him makes his eyes wide with wonder: Miles Austin has sped past the Giants’ secondary on a go route. He is wide open. All Romo has to do is get the football into Austin’s arms, and mathematics will take care of the rest: The Cowboys will win, solidifying first place in the NFC East. And the Giants will lose a fifth straight game and go to 6-7 on the year.
“Miles makes his move,” Romo will say later, “and the game is right there for us.”
But Romo is rushed ever so slightly, and he chooses to loft the ball high and deep, hoping Austin can Willie Mays it. He cannot. The Giants get the ball back. Eli Manning does what Eli Manning does. The Giants take the lead, survive a late rally by blocking a field goal, and the treadmill cranks itself up to about 15 …
You have to fast forward to here: second-and-1, the ball sitting on the New England 14-yard line, late in the afternoon of Jan. 22 inside Gillette Stadium. There are fewer than 30 seconds left in the AFC Championship, and the Ravens trail the Patriots 23-20, and New England is wheezing and sputtering, back on its heels, ready to be taken out.
Joe Flacco drops back to pass, and what he sees in front of him makes his heart nearly fly out of his chest: Lee Evans has snuck behind the Patriots secondary, near the right edge of the end zone. He is open. Flacco threads a beautiful ball over arms and between hands, a perfect parabola bound for Evans, and when he makes the catch, arithmetic will take care of the rest: The Ravens will win, earning a spot in the Super Bowl. And the Patriots will be forced to spend the next six months realizing they blew an AFC title at home.
“He ran a terrific route,” Flacco will later say, “and really gave us the chance to make a big, big play.”
But while Evans seems to gather the ball in, he does so with his feet in the air. One comes down fine. The other is about to when Sterling Moore hammers Evans, swiping the ball loose an eyeblink before paydirt. That’s the play that will haunt the Ravens for months, even more than the game-tying chip-shot field goal Billy Cundiff will yank a few seconds later.
This is how tenuous these Super Bowl runs are. This is how fragile.
“You never underestimate that,” Giants guard Chris Snee said yesterday. “It’s not possible. It’s such an amazing thing, how thin the difference between being here and being home is. If you think about it too much it’ll make you crazy.”
“Sometimes,” Patriots running back Benjarvus Green-Ellis said, “you just have to play as hard as you can and hope that if you need to make a play, you’re the one making the play.”
As fortunate as the Pats may feel to have survived that Baltimore gauntlet, it’s the Giants who probably have a far better taste of just how fickle both sides of that equation can be as they prepare for Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday.
Think about it:
If the Giants had finished out what was, in essence, an unloseable game in December 2010 — eight days short of a year to the day before their Cowboys’ escape, when they squandered a 21-point lead over the Eagles at the Meadowlands with 8:17 to go — then they, not the Packers, earn the sixth and final seed in last year’s playoffs.
Do the Giants go on the same January rampage the Packers did? Maybe. Maybe not.
“But the point is, we’ll never know,” Snee said. “And that is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night.”
Until another ball takes another bounce and suddenly someone else is counting sheep. It’s better when it’s someone else.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com